In
one of those towering, epic posts I seem driven to write I asked, "What
hath the Lords of the New Church wrought?" (Take it all in HERE). Ever since, I've been waiting to find an excuse to share this live show from the early 1980's and this post over on MetaFilter was the final push. (MRML's mess of Lords posts can be found HERE.)
This 36 minute Lords of the New Church concert recorded for Spanish TV was liberated from the studio and then uploaded to YouTube (I believe...) by the user known as kigonjiro. Bless all involved
This fine-souding boot is supposed to have come from the Ritz in Stockholm Sweden on December10th 1982
New Church Question Of Temperature Girls Girls Girls Livin' On Livin' Russian Roulette Fortune Teller Little Boys Play With Dolls Open Your Eyes Holy War Portobello Apocalypso
So the offer is on the
table, sacrifice a few words to the COMMENTS section and we're willing
to let forth STILL more lost Lords!
This out-of-print collection compiles various live tracks and rarities for the devout Lords of the New Church (more HERE) devotees.
1 Dance With Me
2 Making Time
3 Walking The Dog
4 Real Bad Time
5 Things Go Bump
6 Follow
7 Method To My Madness
8 Question Of Temperature
9 New Church
10 Lords Prayer
So the offer is on the table, sacrifice a few words to the COMMENTS section and we're willing to let forth STILL more lost Lords!
It is said by many that the stage was where the Lords of the New Church (more HERE) reigned. Now is
the time to come to your own conclusion. We here at MRML like the studio
albums both in spite of and because
of their eighties production. There a squirm-inducing moments all over
those albums where you wish there'd been a stronger, smarter producer at
the board. That being said, there's something cheerfully subversive
about the clash between the band's imagine (not to mention their
pedigree and lyrical stance) and their pop aspirations. It's ironic but
not in a laugh at it kinda way
but in an unsettling sort of way. I miss having a band with such
complications messing up the pop/underground dichotomy.
This particular show preserved on the bootleg, Scene of the Crime, was recorded in January of 1985 in Zurich and finds the band vamping out their punked-up goth-pop at full volume.
So the offer is on the table, sacrifice a few words to the COMMENTS section - tell us where The Lords excelled - in the studio on the stage or some monstrous combination of the two - and we're willing to let forth more lost Lords!
This bootleg, Open Your Eyes, comes from a 1982 FM Broadcast recorded at a New York club called My Father's Place. The sound quality is very good and catches The Lords of the New Church (more HERE) spitting fire.
"OPEN YOUR EYES - LIVE AT MY FATHER'S PLACE"
LP - Blue Vinyl (Evil Boy Production)
Live In New York, Oct. '82
New Church
Question Of Temperature
Girls Girls Girls
Livin' On Livin'
Eat Your Heart Out
Russian Roulette
Fortune Teller
Open Your Eyes
Little Boys Play With Dolls
Holy War
Portobello
Apocalypso
New Church (encore)
So, despite the slow pace of reader feedback, the offer remains on the table, sacrifice a few words to the COMMENTS section and we're willing to let forth LOTS of lost Lords!
So lots of readers loved Live at the Spit - 80 downloads already - but it took almost a week to generate a paltry seven comments (and no, I didn't count the one that appeared five minutes after posting asking where the link was).
Can we do better?
Here's an amazing never-released BBC radio broadcast from 1982 that catches the then-young Lords of the New Church (more HERE) in all it's strutting glory.
So the offer is on the table, sacrifice a few words to the COMMENTS section and we're willing to let forth more lost Lords!
What hath the Lords of the New Church
wrought? They brought a type of punk, a gussied-up Stooges meets New
York Dolls sound with raunchy guitars n' sneered vocals to the
mainstream. They, sadly, helped pave the way for bad-boy fashion-disasters like
Billy Idol and Motley Crue. And yet their music, all excesses aside,
rings as hauntingly true today as ever.
"Truth is the sword of us all."
The Lords of the New Church
began in 1981 as that most grandiose of aggregations, the super-group.
And a punk rock super-group to make matters worse! The mix of players,
from different styles and different countries, did offer hope. Stiv
Bators of the Dead Boys and Brian James of the Dammed formed a
traditional British song-writing partnership, anchored by a rhythm
section of Sham 69's Dave Tregunna and ex-Barracuda Nicky Turner. The
final tally may or may not have surpassed than the sum of its parts but
it surely created a striking figure all its own.
Taken
as a whole, the Lords were a twisted Frankenstein monster. Image-wise,
they played up a sleazy punk-goth-metal fashion complete with leather,
studs and bandannas. Lyrically, they combined an occasionally incomprehensible
political philosophy with a similarly disjointed anti-religious thrust.
Musically things only got more complicated.
The
band was founded on Bators-James shared love of the Stooges, as
evidenced by Bators Iggy-worship, but this was a band who revered the
New York Dolls ("L'il Boys Play With Dolls" name-checks almost every
Doll’s song) and covered obscure sixties punk songs (Balloon Farm's
“Question of Temperature”). Yet, despite having proto-punk
influences and a goth-metal look, the Lords decided to be a pop band.
They wrote songs with huge hooks (witness the awesome, “Open Your
Eyes”) and allowed the keyboards (and occasional horns) equal play in
the mix. The Lords tried to make sense of punk, six years after ground
zero, sort of like the Combat Rock-era Clash.
Picture disc photo (probably) by Longy
In fact, the Clash's first and last drummer (and only chiropractor) Terry Chimes co-wrote the Lord's third single, "Russian Roulette”. The song mines the same vein of ApocalypseNow jungle psychosis (in an almost Hearts of Darkness way) that his former band-mates did in "Charlie Don't Surf" on 1981's Sandinista.
Chimes' wrote the song with Tony James (later Mick Jones co-conspirator
in Carbon Silicon), whose former band-mate Billy Idol would take a
similar but more limited, set of ingredients as the Lords to the top of
the pop charts.
Today, most of the Lords material is out-of-print, though two collection and some dodgy material (including new material with a different lead singer, a sort of Lords of the 21st Century kind of affair) remain available. But we here at MRML have hit upon The Lost Treasures of The Lords and if you just say the word(s), we're willing to bring you to Church! Today's offering is the incredibly rare pseudo-bootleg Live at The Spit which is a 1982 FM broadcast from WBCN, Boston that shows the band spitting out louder, snottier (if not younger) versions of the tracks from their debut album.
So the offer is on the table, sacrifice a few words to the COMMENTS section and we're willing to let forth more lost Lords!
In one of those towering, epic posts I seem driven to write I asked, "What hath the Lords of the New Church wrought?" (Take it all in HERE). Ever since, I've been waiting to find an excuse to share this live show from the early 1980's and this post over on MetaFilter was the final push. (MRML's mess of Lords posts can be found HERE.)
This 36 minute Lords of the New Church concert recorded for Spanish TV was liberated from the studio and then uploaded to YouTube (I believe...) by the user known as kigonjiro. Bless all involved
We interrupt this shitload of Christian rock to bring you this Lords of the New Church Update: The Lords Live at the Spit has been found and ripped by Mr. Ollie Stench ("I'm no hero", Ollie might have said, "Just a man who loves the Lords".)
Download Live at the Spit but don't forget to leave a thank-you comment for Ollie for the nice 320 kbps rip and to go visit him here (He's posted four MORE Live Lords shows to boot.)
It is said by many that the stage was where the Lords reigned. Now is the time to come to your own conclusion. We here at MRML like the studio albums both in spite of and because of their eighties production. There a squirm-inducing moments all over those albums where you wish there'd been a stronger, smarter producer at the board. That being said, there's something cheerfully subversive about the clash between the band's imagine (not to mention their pedigree and lyrical stance) and their pop aspirations. It's ironic but not in a laugh at it kinda way but in an unsettling sort of way. I miss having a band with such complications messing up the pop/underground dichotomy.
Still no "Live at the Spit, though I found a boot from an '82 Boston show that is probably the right one but it's in .WMA , so I'll just wait till a reader can offer us a good copy. Anyone?
At the end of the Lords of the New Church's reign of terror, things got ugly, Robespierre ugly. In one of their final moments in the spotlight, they executed a version of Madonna's wafer-thin pop confection, "Like A Virgin". The Lords' take is like that sick joke someone tells you so fast you forget you're not supposed to laugh. Musically, it''s pretty threadbare (only Bators and James perform here, the rhythms were ghost-played by programmable machines). The final result is every bit as pretty as that grisly cover would indicate.
Nearing their final demise the Lords issue the Psycho Sex 12" in 1986. For this e.p. the band was reduced to obscure French indie label Bondage International after their major label deal with I.R.S. lapsed. This particular version of of the e.p. also contains two songs from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre II soundtrack. It's not particularity dire, just unnecessary; but that's never stopped a good obsessive now has it?.
Third time's the curse for the Lords of the New Church (see here), who would never really recover from this 1984 album's commercial failure. And it's not for lack of trying. The Lords worked with metal producer guy of the era (Chris Tsangerides) to gain a crisp, metallic sound, which Trouser Press described as "a cross between Raw Power and Rebel Yell". The songs are solid, the production writ large and the lyrical themes as mad as ever. But it all came to naught.
Tsangerides' metal pedigree does bring out the Rock but the Lords with their sneering-yet-catchy songs ("Method to our Madness"), their faux satanism (Aleister Crowley's law is used as the title of "Do What Thou Wilt") and those funky bass-lines n' female backing vocals ("Murder-Style") still often end up sounding like a better version of the later Rolling Stones.
The Lords story soon peters out but not before we cover the gruesome song that sparked this series of posts...
Their second album finds the Lords (see here) faltering a bit. Neither the production, the playing or the song-writing measure up to their debut. To be fair, Bators-James' "Dance with Me", with it's kitschy video, hokey come-ons ("Love can be like bondage") and slinky tune, is a new wave (electro-pop division) classic.
(Wince-inducing isn't it ? The oddest moment though, has to be that kid with the Skrwdriver shirt hosting the show!)
There are other fine examples of their pop malevolence (like an original entitled "Johnny Too Bad") but the second and final single was the other brightest light, a Grass Roots cover produced by Todd Rundgren (the man behind the board for the New York Dolls and many other classics).
Overall, this is an album more concerned with "nocturnal salvation" than religious or political conspiracy (which still gets some play on the catchy, "Tale of Two Cities"). It's got a bit of mainstream dance-rock groove going on, akin to the Rolling Stones early eighties work, which some might take as a compliment. However the more tacked-on synthesizers and the dopier lyrics ("Don't worry children, everything's gonna be aright") refuse to let this album rule the dance floor or the stadium.
The mightily precious Nouvelle Vague covered the song on their Bande a Part album.
What hath the Lords of the New Church wrought? They brought a type of punk, a gussied-up Stooges meets New York Dolls sound loaded with raunchy guitars n' sneered vocals to the mainstream. They helped pave the way for bad-boy fashion-disasters like Billy Idol and Motley Crue. And yet their music, all excesses aside, still rings as hauntingly true as ever.
The Lords of the New Church began in 1981 as that most grandiose of aggregations, the super-group. And a punk rock super-group to make matters worse! The mix of players, from different styles and different countries, did offer hope. Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys and Brian James of the Dammed formed a traditional British song-writing partnership, anchored by a rhythm section of Sham 69's Dave Tregunna and ex-Barracuda Nicky Turner. The final tally may or may not have surpassed than the sum of its parts but it surely created a striking figure all its own.
Taken as a whole, the Lords were a twisted Frankenstein monster. Image-wise, they played up a sleazy punk-goth-metal fashion complete with leather, studs and bandannas. Lyrically, they combined an incomprehensible political philosophy with a similarly disjointed anti-religious thrust. Musically things only got more complicated.
The band was founded on Bators-James shared love of the Stooges, as evidenced by Bators Iggy-worship, but this was a band who revered the New York Dolls ("L'il Boys Play With Dolls" name-checks almost every Doll’s song) and covered obscure sixties punk songs (Balloon Farm's “Question of Temperature”). Yet, despite having the proto-punk influences and the punk-metal look, the Lords decided to be a pop band. They wrote songs with huge hooks (witness the awesome, “Open Your Eyes”) and allowed the keyboards (and occasional horns) equal play in the mix. The Lords tried to make sense of punk, six years after ground zero, sort of like the Combat Rock-era Clash.
In fact, the Clash's first and last drummer (and only chiropractor) Terry Chimes co-wrote the Lord's third single, "Russian Roulette”. The song mines the same vein of ApocalypseNow jungle psychosis (in an almost Hearts of Darkness way) that his former band-mates did in "Charlie Don't Surf" on 1981's Sandinista. Chimes' wrote the song with Tony James (later Mick Jones co-conspirator in Carbon Silicon), whose former band-mate Billy Idol would take a similar but more limited, set of ingredients as the Lords to the top of the pop charts.
Most of the Lords material is out-of-print, though two collection and some dodgy material (including new material with a different lead singer, a sort of Lords of the 21st Century kind of affair) remain available.
MRML is a blog about the devestating effects of culture: music, politics, comics plus etc. blah blah blah. At times MRML will post fine, unpurchasable three-chord obscurica (punk, pop-punk, new wave, mod, power-pop, gospel, reggae, hardcore, rockabilly, folk, country...whatever.) - - - - - - "The otherwise unavailable files in this blog are posted for a limited time and are intended for educational, non-commercial use. These files were transcribed from what are believed to be out-of-print sources. If you are aware of any of these items being readily available from commercial sources, or if any of these files infringe upon rights that you hold, please notify us so that we can quickly remove the referenced items immediately." - - - SUPPORT THE ARTISTS - BUY MUSIC!
If you have any questions or music to donate you can contact me at musicruinedmylife (at) gmail (dot) com
Re: Re-Ups
MRML does not plan to restore all of the content lost in The Great Mediafire Gutting of 2012. Polite requests may be made in the appropriate section, regular commenters will get priority.
Support The Lords!
